


Cruel but Beautiful

by Jyeen



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: But it has a happy ending because I hate being sad, Canon Compliant, Feels, M/M, One Shot, Sad, Short, Spoilers for the Manga, but no violence, lots of blood, the blood it kinda gross
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-26
Updated: 2018-11-26
Packaged: 2019-08-29 15:36:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,259
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16746733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jyeen/pseuds/Jyeen
Summary: Eren's been pushing himself too far with his titan armor training with Hanji. Levi has to deal with the result. SPOILERS FOR THE MANGA UP TO CHAPTER 88!





	Cruel but Beautiful

**Author's Note:**

> *explodes from magic lamp* Ten thousand years can give you such a crick in the neck!  
> I did say I wouldn't update regularly, but I'd hoped to be more regular than this. Ugh! I just wish I could spend all my time writing, but college is being a massive bitch right now, so hopefully I can finish the semester strong and be able to indulge in yaoi fangirling over winter break! Until then, I pounded out this one shot to prove that I was still alive and have every intention of continuing my other works. More announcements at the end!  
> I don't really ship Ereri canonically for age-gap reasons, but if it WERE canon, this is how I imagine it starting.

It’s nearing sunset when the door to the cabin opens and Levi hears the heavy padding of Eren’s boots as he wearily makes his way to his quarters at the end of the hallway. _So, shitty glasses finally called it a day,_ Levi idly discerns as he scans over the latest letters from Pixis. As usual, the eccentric commander’s thoughts are long-winded and completely incomprehensible in the most poetic way, like a drunken dancer gracefully stumbling from subject to subject. Levi doesn’t bother to read most of it, but amid his superior’s rambling he can detect a sense of unease. Not that the top brass can really be blamed for feeling that way. No one in living memory has ever had a reason to be hopeful of the future, much less optimistic. They’ve come so far in only a year, it seems too good to be true, like the entire population within the walls is sharing a beautiful collective daydream that’s sure to shatter at any second.

Through the walls of the cabin, a cough sounds from the other room. The small size of their lodgings doesn’t offer much in the way of privacy, unfortunately. However, Levi can’t argue with the logic of settling for less space after leaving the rest of his squad back in the capitol as Eren continues his intensive training with Hanji. In this scenario, the noisy bunch of adolescents would only draw more attention. Not to mention the cabin is kept immaculately clean with their absence. And in any case, their protection isn’t really needed at the moment. The Scouts have the full support of the government, and with Historia’s recent coronation, the government is fully supported by the masses. At least, for now.

Another cough, wet with fluid. Levi _tch_ s quietly to himself. “Fucking disgusting.” Of course Hanji had pushed Eren past his limits, and it’s just like the single-minded brat to go along with their demands. Levi sighs and returns to glancing over Pixis’ letter, only to pause when several more pained coughs reach his ears. “Hey! Brat!” he calls over his shoulder toward the door of his quarters, open only a crack.

Eren doesn’t respond, but his coughing fit becomes more violent, more choked-sounding, and then suddenly there’s an impactful _thud_ on the other side of their shared wall, followed by a loud crash.

“Shit,” Levi mutters, chest immediately tightening with an emotion he refuses to acknowledge as worry as he shoves his chair back and briskly steps into the hallway, then turns into Eren’s plain room. Eren was never one for material possessions, a quality that Levi appreciates and shares, but it still feels odd to see how barren the sixteen-year-old’s quarters are, not displaying so much as a glimmer of the vibrant personality Levi had quickly become familiar with after meeting the boy. The strange sensation of something _missing,_ however, is immediately shoved to the back of the soldier’s mind when his eyes fall upon his subordinate, pale and bloody-faced, slumped against the wall for support. “Christ, Jaeger,” Levi murmurs under his breath as he sinks to the ground to examine the young titan shifter. Eren is struggling to breathe through a mouthful and a nose-ful of blood, which trickles down his face and sputters between his lips. His sleeves and shirt are already sprayed with dark red flecks as a result of his coughing.

“Cap . . . tain,” Eren wheezes as Levi places the back of his hand against the boy’s cheek, feeling the cold clamminess of his skin as well as the slight trembling of his tan frame, though the bright glow of health has somewhat faded from under his skin, Levi notices. Eren’s eyes look away from him, ashamed. “Sorry . . . I’m a mess.”

“If anyone’s gonna be sorry, it’ll be that damn four-eyes, once I get my hands on them,” Levi snaps, then slides a shoulder under one of Eren’s arms. “C’mon, up. Let’s get your ass to the washroom.”

After being pulled to his feet, Eren manages to take two steps forward before his legs give out once more, but Levi swiftly catches him by wrapping one arm around his waist and one behind his knees. “Put your arms around my shoulders,” he directs.

“But my sleeves—”

“Just fucking do it already, brat.”

Gingerly, hyperaware of every speck of his blood that smudges against Levi’s clothes and skin at the contact, Eren placed his arms on either side of his captain’s neck, eyes widening slightly as Levi pulls him against his chest and carries him out into the hallway. Part of the older man cringes as he contemplates the miracle that will be needed to remove the stains from his shirt, but at that moment, they are irrelevant.

“I told both of you before,” Levi says as they enter the washroom and he carefully lowers Eren to the floor, “that you aren’t allowed to do anything too dangerous with your titan abilities without my supervision. You should be focusing on fine-tuning your skills, not letting that crazy bitch try anything that you haven’t done before. Need I remind you how small-scale this operation is? What if something went wrong and I wasn’t there?”

Eren finally meets his eyes, two gleaming orbs that Levi can only compare to the unfathomable waters they discovered less than a year ago, extending outwards from their island in every direction. Like those waters, his eyes seethe endlessly, and like those waters, they draw Levi into their seemingly bottomless depths.

“We’ve been out here for almost three months,” Eren states dryly. “I only have six years left before I have to pass on my titan. That’s too short a time for me to worry about the—” The words are abruptly halted as Eren gags on slick iron. Levi fetches a cloth and dampens it before returning to press the cloth gently to Eren’s mouth.

“Spit it out,” he orders sternly. If he hadn’t been struggling to breathe, Eren would have been surprised – even shocked – at his cleanliness-obsessed supervising officer allowing himself to be in such close proximity to the unsanitary disaster that Eren currently considers himself. A mouthful of saliva and blood is spat into the cloth in Levi’s hand. The man doesn’t so much as grimace when he goes to rinse out the cloth, then returns to begin wiping at the remaining red streaks that are beginning to dry on Eren’s face, chin, and neck.

“Captain,” Eren frowns at him. “You should go back to my room, some of the blood dripped on the floor—”

“It can wait.”

“But, sir.” The young man’s weak voice grows more insistent. “I can take care of myself, but if you don’t go now, it’ll dry on the wood and make it a lot harder to cle—”

“I don’t care!” Levi says it a little louder than he’d meant to, but if Eren doesn’t stop thinking about cleaning _right fucking now . . . ._

Levi’s eyelids close for a moment as he goes through the motions of regaining firm control over his expression, a process that has become second-nature to him. But when he looks at Eren again, the boy is staring up at him with such turmoil in his eyes that Levi’s fragile control disintegrates and before he can gather the wits to stop himself, he’s pressing his lips to Eren’s.

Eren’s lips are cold and slick and he tastes like metal. None of that matters, though. As a matter of fact, as Levi instinctually moves his mouth against Eren’s, he finds it harder and harder to think of anything but the person in front of him. The determined boy with the bright ocean eyes that sent a spark down Levi’s spine from the first day they’d met. The beautiful boy with the chocolate brown hair that framed his youthful face, now beginning to sharpen with the emergence of adulthood. The boy who carried the hopes and futures of an entire nation on his shoulders, but was denied the same.

 _It’s too cruel,_ Levi thinks as he combs his fingers through Eren’s not-quite-shoulder-length hair, slowly licking at wet lips before slipping his tongue into Eren’s mouth. There’s no heat to the kiss, only an unquenchable desire to be close, to learn every part of the boy. Levi uses his grip to better angle Eren’s mouth and something slick drips down his chin. He can feel the brunet’s heavy exhales against his face, the slight pressure of their noses against one another, the vibrations of Eren’s languid hum reverberating in his chest. _This world is cruel to everyone, but all I can think is . . ._

_Why him?_

_Why does_ Eren _have to die?_

Levi doesn’t realize there are tears streaming down his face until Eren pulls away and wipes at them with his thumbs ghosting repetitively over sharp cheekbones. Eren has discovered in this last year that while Levi may have mastered the ability to keep his emotions from showing on his face, his eyes are always truthful. And he has never seen that wintery blue quite as anguished as it is at this moment.

“Eren,” Levi whispers, and the boy can’t contain a deep sigh when fingers slip out of his hair to caress the back of his neck. “ _Eren._ ”

Levi’s mouth is now just as bloodstained as Eren’s, but neither of them mention it anymore. The younger of the two swallows thickly, summoning the courage to speak even as a tightness begins to form in his throat. “Don’t do that.”

Icy eyes blink. “What?” His fingers loosen with uncertainty, but Eren grasps tighter, keeping him from pulling away.

“I know what you’re thinking,” he says quietly. “I know why you didn’t say anything before this. You’ve lost too many people already, so letting yourself c-care about me . . .” Eren’s breath stutters, trying to keep his voice from breaking. “You’d just be setting yourself up to get hurt all over again. And I don’t want to be the cause of any more of your pain, Levi.”

“Eren, you—”

“We can just go back to the way we’ve always been,” Eren continues earnestly. “We can forget this happened. You can keep calling me a shitty brat like always, and I’ll keep messing up your tea, and—”

Eren is silenced by another deep kiss, and as much as he tries to resist, he feels himself melting into Levi’s embrace. When the captain breaks away this time, he stays so close that their lips brush when he speaks. “Maybe you’re right,” Levi breathes, and Eren shivers at the sensation. “After everything, I should have learned how to distance myself. All the death I’ve seen, all the people I’ve lost. But even after all that, I’m still not strong enough to let you go.”

A sob manages to escape from the teenager, and Levi leans in to place kisses against his face, light as rain. “I’ve always been a man who’s lived in the present, but with you, I want to think about the future too. I want to believe there’s a way you can cheat fate.”

“I can’t allow myself to have that hope,” Eren whispers. “I’m a weapon, I have a mission, that’s all. Everyone else has already started to understand that. Even Armin and Mikasa. So why can’t you?”

“Maybe because I know what it’s like to be a weapon.” Levi pulls Eren against him, letting the brunet’s head rest on his shoulder. “I know how lonely it is.”

They stay that way for several minutes, Levi tracing the ridges of Eren’s spine as they sit pressed together on the washroom floor. Hanji will be returning soon, Levi recalls hazily, but can’t bring himself to untangle from the body in his arms. “Do you really want to pretend this didn’t happen, Eren?”

The reply is almost indiscernible. “No.”

Despite himself, the admission brings something close to a smile to Levi’s face. “What was that thing you used to say? _‘If you don’t fight, you can’t win’?_ I refuse to stop fighting for you. If you can’t have any hope for yourself, then I’ll hope for you.”

Eren looks up sharply at his words and catches sight of the almost-smile. “You might regret that.”

“Not as much as I would regret pushing you away.”

Something warms in Eren’s chest. When he turns his head and presses his lips to Levi’s, the warmth only grows. Unlike the despairing need of their first two kisses, this one leaves Eren feeling free and light, as if he were . . . happy? It had been so long since he’d felt that particular emotion. Certainly not since Shiganshina.

“You’re right,” Eren says, not wanting to look away from the piercing blue that stared into his turquoise. “It is lonely. And I’m so tired of it. The last thing I want to do it be a weakness for you, but if you’re determined to hope . . .” Eren lets his fingers trace through the captain’s hair, finally allowing himself to smile. “Then I’ll just be strong enough for the both of us. Whatever time we have, I won’t let it go to waste. Not anymore.”

Fifteen minutes later, Hanji returns to find both their rooms unoccupied, and a rather gruesome trail of blood on the floor. When Hanji finally does locate their two comrades cuddling on the floor of the washroom, their relief that neither of them had been kidnapped or murdered is enough for them to head straight to bed, where they collapse without even removing their harness. In the morning, Eren and Levi will have some explaining to do.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope that didn't bum you out too much, I couldn't stand to just let it end on a sad note, even though I can only sense tragedy for our boys with the way the manga is going...  
> Anyway . . . ANNOUNCEMENTS!  
> Again, I WILL be continuing Attack on Reiss and Call Your Name. Next update will probably be for the latter, though I'm actually going to rewrite the chapter I've already uploaded . . . I just need to change some things . . . I'll explain the changes in the notes for the next chapter if you don't want to re-read it.  
> I STARTED A TUMBLR! Not sure what to do with it, but I've seen lots of people on here with Tumblrs, so I thought I might as well jump on the bandwagon. I post random fangirl things, funny things that happen in my life, as well as stuff about my writing, so if you want to go stalk me there, [here's my blog!](https://issanavocado.tumblr.com/)  
> Happy late Thanksgiving, take care of yourselves!


End file.
